TOP OF THE SIXTH

FRINGE BENEFITS FROM OLYMPIC GOLD

Members of the U.S. women's hockey team team read a Top 10 list of "Cool Things About Winning a Gold Medal" on "The Late Show With David Letterman" on Tuesday night.

The list included: "It makes a really nice 'ding' when you whack it against Verne Lundquist's head" and "The Canadian snowboarding team sends over some delicious homemade brownies."

THE HUE AND CRY: After teammate Victor Gomez colored his hair orange and then two coaches did likewise, reports Alan Baldwin of Reuters, "Gerard Escoda is the odd man out in the Andorran Olympic ski team, the one who decided the Games were not worth dyeing for."

-- Phil Rosenthal of the Chicago Sun-Times hears that Vice President Al Gore didn't really intend to call the U.S. luge medalists to offer his congratulations. "He was just making random fund-raising calls to Asia and got them by mistake."

-- Mike Downey of the Los Angeles Times, on the U.S. men's hockey team's only win of the Olympics: "What is it to beat Belarus, anyway? It's like beating Oregon State."

-- So far the prize for the toughest Olympic hometown to pronounce goes to that of ski-jump gold medalist Jani Soininen, the pride of Jyvaeskylae, Finland.

CAUGHT TRYING TO STRETCH: Bernie Lincicome of the Chicago Tribune says American figure skater Todd Eldredge doomed his medal chances by trying to turn a double axel into a triple axel in his long program. Says Lincicome: "Everyone knows you get thrown out trying to make a triple out of a double, unless Keith Moreland is in right field, that is."

-- According to news reports, the new aerodynamic strips in the suits of speedskaters were developed by Dutch researchers. "That's correct," says Dave Barry of the Miami Herald. "While our researchers have been frittering away their time on things like computer microchips, the shrewd Dutch have been forging ahead in the crucial field of skating-suit aerodynamics."

-- "The Winter Olympics has the luge," says The Vent, a column of reader complaints in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, "so why can't the Summer Olympics have a huge waterslide race?"

-- "It's all a conspiracy," says Jim Armstrong of the Denver Post. "The Olympics actually ended two weeks ago, but CBS doesn't want you to know."